I Read a Study That Surprised Me

I build tools that help people write about their feelings. So when a careful study comes out about people getting mental health support from an AI, I pay close attention.

I also have to be careful. People who build something are not the best people to judge whether it works. I want it to work. That is the bias I have to watch for.

This is a study I read twice. The first time, I was excited. The second time, I tried to read it like someone who did not build anything. Here is what I found.

What the study did

A team in Israel ran a careful test (Shoshani et al., 2026). They found 995 university students who said they were stressed and feeling low. That is about as many people as fit in a small concert hall.

They split the students into three groups by chance. One group got to use an AI chat app called Kai for 12 weeks. One group went to in-person group therapy with real psychologists, also for 12 weeks. One group got nothing for 12 weeks. The third group is called a control group, which means a group used to compare against the others.

Then the researchers measured everyone's anxiety, sadness, and how good they felt about their lives. They measured at the start. They measured after 12 weeks. They measured again three months later.

This kind of careful test, where people are split by chance, is the strongest kind of study we have. It is called a randomized clinical trial, which means people are sorted into groups by random chance so the groups are fair to compare.

The result that made me read it twice

The students who used the AI got better at handling anxiety. That part I expected.

What I did not expect was this. The AI group did better than the group that saw real therapists too (Shoshani et al., 2026). Not just better than the no-help group. Better than the therapy group.

And the therapy group, the one with real psychologists in a real room, did not do better than the no-help group on anxiety. The two were about the same.

I read that part three times to make sure I had it right.

The honest reaction

My first reaction was relief. I build writing tools that involve AI. A study like this makes my work look good. So my first feeling was, "see, it works."

That is exactly when I have to slow down.

A study about something I want to be true is the kind of study I will read carelessly. I will skip the parts that complicate the story. I will hold on tight to the parts that support what I already believe.

So I read it again. I tried to find the parts that should bother me. There are some, and I want to be honest about them.

The next chapter is about what daily use of the AI actually looked like, and the finding that surprised me even more than the headline.

References

Shoshani, A., Gurfinkel, B., Kor, A., et al. (2026). Efficacy of a Conversational AI Agent for Psychiatric Symptoms and Digital Therapeutic Alliance: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Network Open, 9(4), e266713.